Pandemic parenting and the power of art

Back to school feels different this year. For many, it continues to be a time of stress and worry, and wondering what comes next. At Nova Dance we passionately believe in the power of dance and art to help cope, especially during difficult and uncertain times.

So we reached out to a few of the parents in our extended family to see how they’ve been using movement and art to help their children, and themselves, cope with this challenging time.

Art brought us closer together

"During this pandemic, we have danced in our living rooms, moved together with strangers over Zoom, sung loudly in unison, drawn pictures and cards for each other and our parents, we even made animals from our food. Art is what will go into the mental time capsule we buried to remember covid 19, and it will be the one thing we don't want to forget about it. Art is the one thing that made us smile, and brought us closer together, in the end all we had was each other, so we danced freely! Through our many life tragedies and challenges, we look to art to bring us joy, comfort and love."

Neena Jayarajan, Associate Artist

The art of cooking and baking

"As we approach the new school year with so much doubt and fear asking ourselves “how are we going to manage this”, I reflect on our COVID-19 spring and summer. Though it wasn’t the usual trips and socializing, the silver lining was the amount of time we’ve spent in our kitchen. Our home is usually filled with music and dance, however, this has been a discovery of how much the kids love the art of cooking and baking! It has been a time of creativity and experiments followed by satisfaction, fulfillment and the joy of sharing."

Meera Kanageswaran, Former Intern, Cast member M3, Svāhā

We've always been an "artsy" household

In my spare time I knit and so my daughter has started doing that. As soon as I got the sewing machine, she immediately got on it and started making clothes for her dolls. Each Friday night it's our karaoke night, which we all love. My daughter and I dance a lot. We have impromptu dance sessions. I think that with these gifts of art and movement these trying times have been made more bearable. We're able to sing and dance and love and laugh together a lot more now than ever before. She is also deep into Lego which is a creative outlet unto itself!

Giselle Clarke-Trenaman, Board Secretary

My art practice helps me to see possibilities where it seems there aren't any

Some things we’ve been doing to entertain ourselves, in no particular order: Marching bands. Random dance parties. Slow motion rolling on the floor from one end of the house to the other. Contact dance jams (these are quite one sided as to who gets the elevation, my son is 3). Painting with random objects - fork, pom pom, q-tip, pizza brush, scrunched up paper. Making painting pressings when there is WAY too much paint on the paper. Making "weird" music with modular synthesizers (my partner who is a musician leads this one). Silly walks. Random dancing while waiting in lines. Making monsters (out of felt/toilet paper rolls/empty tissue boxes/paper or whatever we have on hand). Making sock puppets. Shadow dancing… I could go on.

My art practice helps me to see possibilities where it seems there aren't any, play in the mundane, a bit of hope when the playgrounds are closed. Hanging out with my 3 yr old helps me get my sillies out wherever we happen to be. There is a permission to laugh and be ridiculous that might get me 'looks' if I were an adult woman walking around on her own galloping down the sidewalk. We are talking a lot about holding conflicting emotions in ourselves at the same time - Being sad that we can't go visit the east coast grandparents, but having fun making a funny little video to send to them.

Kate Holden, Cast member Infinite Storms, participant and facilitator for Creation Labs.